On Anxiety

Renata Salecl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134381814
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Humanism in Philosophy

We frequently hear that we live in an age of anxiety, from 'therapy culture', the Atkins diet and child anti-depressants to gun culture and weapons of mass destruction. While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its Scream franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties.
On Anxiety takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is responsible. Putting anxiety on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness?
Drawing on vivid examples from films such as the X Files and Cyrano de Bergerac, drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it.
Erudite and compelling, On Anxiety is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today.

Index

Abrams, Fran: Below the Breadline 65–6

Adorno, Theodor: Dialectic of Enlightenment (with Horkheimer) 148

advertising: portraying success 68–71; women and smoking 157n

Afghanistan 154–5n

The Age of Access (Rifkin) 59–60

Albanians 149–50n

Almodovar, Pedro: Law of Desire 75, 86–8

Antunez Roca, Marcelli 42, 43

anxiety: about authority 125–6; ‘age of ’ 1; fantasy and 23–4; versus fear 18; ‘generalized anxiety disorder’ 141–3; making choices 53–5; media advice 143–4; medication 141–3; necessary 148; overt and covert 4

Arp, Hans 40

arts: effect of war 40–2; modernism 44; portraying death 42–6; role of curators 155–6n

authenticity 129

authority: Little Hans’s phobia and 125–6

Before the Rain (film) 150n

Below the Breadline (Abrams) 65–6

Benigni, Roberto: Life is Beautiful 121, 134–8

Bernays, Edward: Propaganda 157n

Big Brother (television) 67

Bin Laden, Osama 3

Bohanna, Gary 28

Boorda, Admiral Jeremy M. 32–3

Bosnia 28

Buther, Captain Anthony 153n

Calle, Sophie 74; and Paul 91–3

capitalism: commodification of life 59–60; hyper- 14; inequalities 11–13, 63–7; marketing 56–7, 61–3; production 57–9 see also consumerism

Cardozo, Justice Benjamin 107–8

Cheever, Ben 64–5, 66

Chichkin, Ilya 44

Coca-Cola 69–70

Coleman, Major Jules V. 154n

Communism: cell structures 9; US fear of 6–7

community: capitalist creation of 60–1; Lacan’s big Other 62

consumerism 157n; attitudes towards 49–51; choice and 53–5; excess of jouissance 146–7; logic of desire 51

Courbet, Gustave 45

Crisis of the Mind (Valery) 1–2

curators 155–6n

Cyrano De Bergerac (Rostand) 75, 78–81, 84–6

Dadaism 40

death: in art 42–6; instinct 151n

depression 162–3n

desire: excess of jouis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction One
• Anxiety at Times of War Two
• Success in Failure: How Hypercapitalism Relies on People’s Feeling of Inadequacy Three
• Love Anxieties Four
• Anxiety of Motherhood Five
• Can Testimony Offer a Cure for Anxiety? Six
• Conclusion Seven
• Notes
• Index